Different people in different works have different solutions for when civilians, or their own allies, are Brainwashed, fallen under Mind Control, or Reforged into a Minion. A Wide-Eyed Idealist would attempt to talk the victim into freeing themselves, while more pragmatic solutions involve coming up with some kind of Magic Antidote, taking out the person controlling them, or just defeating them in combat and hoping it will free them.
Those who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty have one more solution: kill them like they would any other enemy.
There are many potential reasons a character, even a heroic one, could resort to this. Perhaps they Failed a Spot Check and believe their target is a genuine traitor; perhaps the character believes the victims are too far gone or simply doesn't see it as feasible to free them due to time constraints or something similar. Maybe they think they shouldn't free them if they were subjected to something like More than Mind Control and are therefore still partially accountable for their actions or if them being Weak-Willed can still cause issues even after this particular situation is resolved. Or maybe they just got an excuse to get rid of someone they already hated, or just don't care.
Naturally, how this trope is portrayed will be affected heavily by the Sliding Scale of Cynicism vs. Idealism. Slave Mooks are the most frequent victims of this. If one member of a group suggests this, the rest will almost always object, ironically leading to even more division. Usually a Moral Dilemma.
Sub-Trope of Mercy Kill and Shoot the Dog and Super-Trope to Staking the Loved One. Also a niece trope to Shoot the Hostage and cousin to Kill the Host Body. See also Dying as Yourself and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, which is a likely reason for villains to invoke this. Compare Cartesian Karma.
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Chainsaw Man: The Doll Devil has the power to turn people into mindless dolls under her command, which is said to be irreversible. But after going One-Winged Angel in her fight against Denji and Quanxi, she restores her dolls' minds as psychological warfare, forcing the two to cut down people with no control over their bodies as they scream and beg for help. Denji is horrified, but Quanxi, more ruthless, tells him it's just one of the Doll Devil's tricks — and when pressed, says she doesn't actually know, but Violence Is the Only Option, and he'll find them easier to kill that way.
- DEAD ROCK: Yakuto is forced to kill his second homeroom teacher, Saru, after he is brainwashed by God. Normally not the type to hesitate killing those who stand in his way, Yakuto falters here because Saru is the one teacher at the school who isn't evil as sin, but Saru encourages him to go through with it while Fighting from the Inside.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: Rosamia Badam, who has been mentally reconditioned too many times by the Titans and put into the Psyco Gundam Mk. II (which further brainwashes its victims), is left a mentally destroyed mess firing upon friend and foe indiscriminately. Kamille has to kill her as a Mercy Kill.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: In the OVA version of the story, Loni Garvey is brainwashed by her Shamblo's psychoframe into firing on civilians. Banagher attempts to reason with her, but while she attempts to stop herself she can't break free of the psychoframe's control and is killed by Riddhe. Banagher is furious at Riddhe for this as he thinks he'd almost gotten through to her, while Riddhe retorts he was saving as many lives as possible given the situation.
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam:
- Happens to the Four Heavenly Kings, Gundam Fighters who were Brainwashed and Crazy by the Devil Gundam and infected with DG Cells. Downplayed in that they were already assholes to begin with and in several cases were willingly infected.
- More tragically, Domon's brother Kyoji begs Domon to kill him as his normal body is too far gone and his DG Cell-infected cyborg body will also die as soon as the Devil Gundam he's been brainwashed by is destroyed. Domon tearfully complies, blasting both the Brainwashed and Crazy Kyoji and Schwarz Bruder's body, allowing both Kyojis to die.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999): Link's former dragon companion Volvagia is brainwashed by Ganondorf into attacking the Gorons. Link ultimately has no choice but to decapitate Volvagia to stop him from decimating Death Mountain and moving on to the rest of Hyrule.
- One-Punch Man:
- When Tatsumaki discovers her sister's underlings were brainwashed by Do-S, her immediate response is to telekinetically slam them into the nearest building. When Fubuki calls her out on this, Tatsumaki retorts that brainwashed or not, they were clearly enemies.
- In a scene several arcs later that was removed in an Orwellian Retcon, Do-S is unlucky enough to run into Sweet Mask and sics a group of mercenaries she brainwashed after him. He promptly kills all of them, followed by Do-S herself.
- Invoked and exploited in The Rising of the Shield Hero. Princess Malty claims that her younger sister and crown princess Melty was brainwashed by Naofumi, but she can't be cured, which necessitates killing her. This is just a lie she came up with in order to get her sister killed so she can become Queen.
- Sailor Moon:
- The Shitennou were originally Prince Endymion's royal guard, but by the time of the series have been forced to serve Queen Beryl. In multiple continuities, they are killed before being able to be redeemed.
- In the manga, Usagi is forced to fight all the Sailor Soldiers at once, who have been revived and brainwashed by Sailor Galaxia. She has to kill all of them, including Mamoru.
Comic Books
- Infinite Crisis: Defied; when Maxwell Lord had Superman under mind control, he presented Wonder Woman with a moral dilemma. The mind control only wears off if Superman or Lord himself is killed. Diana chooses the latter option, snapping Lord's neck and freeing Superman from his mind control, though this act was recorded and dealt a blow to relations between the Amazons and Man's World.
- Invincible: Mark ends the invasion of the Sequids by murdering their host, Rus Livingston. Robot chastises him for this, since Rus was a victim of the aliens, not the threat itself, and says that they could have worked something out to save him.
- Transformers:
- The Transformers (Marvel): In the UK-exclusive story "The Legacy of Unicron", the decapitated head of Unicron has landed on Junkion, allowing him to brainwash its inhabitants. He also has his minions Scourge and Cyclonus assassinate Shockwave and seize control of the Decepticon army with the aid of freelance peace-keeping agent Death's Head, ordering them to lead the entire Decepticon army on a suicidal assault on the Autobots to distract them. Learning of the situation, Rodimus Prime leaves Ultra Magnus in charge to hold off the Decepticons while he leads a small team to Junkion, deciding to take along the Dinobots as heavy muscle. Unfortunately, he regrets his decision, as the Dinobots don't bother holding back and slaughter the brainwashed Junkions en masse, melting them down into molten slag to overcome their powerful healing abilities. Rodimus ruefully admits he can't even really blame the Dinobots, since if they do hold back, the Junkions would kill them.
- Meanwhile, in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, many of the crew are infected by a Sparkeater virus and turned into strange pseudo-cannibal creatures. The Autobots try to avoid harming their infected crewmates, but the Decepticon Scavengers are under no such compunction (though more out of incompetence than malice). Grimlock, on the other hand, is completely unafraid to mince up his infected former allies when some of them get too close for comfort. They justify it as keeping the infected from killing anyone else, which is true but no consolation to the killed-off characters such as Slapdash and Mainframe.
Fan Works
- And Shine Heaven Now: Walter ended up Mercy Killed when he was brainwashed by the I-Jin of Jeeves to work for Millennium. His brainwashing could be broken only temporarily, his choices were death or being forever bound to Integra. He chose death. To make it even sadder, his own daughter had to do the deed.
- Sary: Despite knowing that Frodo is possessed by Sauron, Aragorn immediately kills him without considering other options, and after that doesn't get him revived, even though a previously dead Legolas is readily and easily brought back later.
Films — Live-Action
- The Matrix: Morpheus explains to Neo that the very people they're trying to save from the Matrix are not only unprepared to be "unplugged", but they're so dependent on the system that they will fight and die to protect it, and therefore they must be considered the enemy. It's also demonstrated that the nigh-invulnerable Agents can take over the body of any plugged human without warning. As such, Neo and his allies never bat an eye at mowing down cops, security guards, or any other human in the Matrix who opposes them.
- Subverted in Nightmare at Noon; after Cheri is contaminated with a substance that turns her into a mindless killer, her husband Ken goes to the cell where she's being held to shoot her, but Riley pulls him away and talks him out of it.
- The Suicide Squad: As Starro's mind control involves completely purging a host's nervous system, effectively erasing the identities of those assimilated into his Hive Mind, the Suicide Squad use this as justification to killing in self-defense or a Mercy Kill.
- Star Wars: Falling to the Dark Side can in some iterations be considered a form of More than Mind Control, but the Jedi Order nonetheless holds that those who do so are Beyond Redemption, which is why, following Anakin's Face–Heel Turn in Revenge of the Sith (which was explicitly brought about by More than Mind Control), Obi-Wan is instructed to kill him by Yoda, and he ends up maiming and leaving Anakin for dead in an act of Cruel Mercy that dooms him to spend the next two decades as a Dark Lord on Life Support. In Return of the Jedi, Luke manages to prove this outlook wrong when he successfully convinces his father to make a Heel–Face Turn driven by compassion as opposed to violence.
Literature
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Defied in the opening battle when Harry notices that Stan Shunpike is acting under the Imperius Curse and opts to disarm him instead of something more lethal. The use of his Signature Move, however, is enough to alert other Death Eaters that this is the real Harry, as opposed to one of the six Polyjuiced impostors.
- The Last of the Renshai: Colbey uses the last nodenal ("needle of mercy") on Episte precisely because there is no chance of the boy's mind coming back.
- The Wheel of Time: In the Last Battle, Aviendha kills several of Graendal's mind-controlled guards, then sees to her horror that one of them was her own clan chief Rhuarc. She consoles herself with the knowledge that he was effectively dead the moment Graendal touched him — her powers leave nothing but an obedient puppet.
Live-Action TV
- Invoked in Jessica Jones (2015); when Jess and Simpson prepare to confront the supervillain Kilgrave, in an inversion of Dying as Yourself, they both vow to kill the other if he manages to control them.
- Common in Supernatural alongside Kill the Host Body. While in earlier seasons, the Winchesters would usually attempt to save sufferers of curses and Demonic Possession, as the series progressed, they become far more willing to kill sufferers of both unless those sufferers are people they knew personally.
- Torchwood: Lisa was partially converted into a Cyberman as a result of the Battle of Canary Wharf, a conflict between the Cybermen and Daleks. Because of this, her mind has been conditioned to convert anyone else who is compatible into a Cyberman and try to take over the planet. Throughout "Cyberwoman", Ianto, who has spent the period since the conflict searching for a cure, remains insistent that she can be saved and actively deflects one attempt at killing her, even as Lisa starts killing. Jack on the other hand is of the opinion that Lisa is effectively dead and tries telling him that nothing can be done for her. In the end, Jack is able to shoot down Lisa alongside the rest of the team, much to Ianto's distress. However, by "Captain Jack Harkness", he too has come to the same conclusion that Jack did — namely that Lisa was already gone.
Video Games
- Baldur's Gate III: Narrowly averted. Upon arriving at the Last Light Inn during Act II, Jaheira will expose the party to a mind flayer tadpole, which will reveal them to be infected, and she orders her Harpers to dispatch of the group, believing them to be True Souls under the influence of the Absolute; depending on your choices previously, she's either stopped by Mol if the party saved the Tieflings at the Emerald Grove, or Iron Fist Marcus who is actually The Mole for the Absolute's cult that's infiltrated the sanctuary around Last Light.
- Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: The main protagonist Komaru Naegi comes very close to doing this when Monaca Towa sends her a video of her parents dying, which causes her to fall into a depression and nearly use a controller to kill all of the people Monaca and her assistant Monokuma brainwashed. Luckily, her friend Toko Fukawa takes it away from her and is able to instill hope in her so she can try to save those who were brainwashed.
- Darksiders II: In the vast majority of cases, the only way to "cure" someone of The Corruption is to kill them.
- Deltarune: The player can choose to fight the Werewires rather than sparing them. Werewires are explicitly Brainwashed and Crazy through the wires that are plugged into their faces. If they are attacked, they will be Lost, making them unable to be recruited. This also happens to Berdly, though if he is fought he eventually manages to fight against the brainwashing, though at the cost of his arm.
- Final Fantasy XIV: This was the fate of anyone who ends up being Tempered by the Primals as, once a person was affected by them, they would become suicidally devoted to that Primal and try to draw other people to become followers themselves, making the Primal stronger. This is why the Warrior of Light and those with the Echo are the only ones who could approach and fight the Primals as they were the only ones immune to Tempering.
- In Goddess of Victory: NIKKE, any Nikke that suffers Corruption must be killed with a Boom, Headshot! to ensure that her brain is destroyed.
- Hollow Knight: The vast majority of the game's enemies are civilian bugs that fell victim to the Infection. While the player character's overarching goal is to destroy it at the source and save the kingdom, it has no choice but to kill hundreds of its victims along the way.
- Legends Of Kong: Most of the enemies encountered are ordinary civilians who have been driven berserk by harmful radio waves. Even though the game's intro discourages you from killing them, there are no long-term consequences for actually doing so, since they'll just come back when you replay the level. In fact, getting 100% Completion outright requires you to complete every level once as a Pacifist Run and once as a "kill absolutely everybody" run.
- Mass Effect:
- Anyone who is indoctrinated by the Reapers, since while one or two characters do possess the ability to resist a little, it is ultimately futile and permanent. Matriarch Benezia even declines the offer to save her in the first game for this exact reason.
- Mass Effect 1: On Feros, it is possible to save everyone controlled by the Thorian, or just go full Renegade, declare them too dangerous to risk sparing and gun them all down.
- Mass Effect 2: In a conversation with Samara, she recounts how Morinth once swayed an entire village to worship her, with the occasional sacrifice of their children to her. When Samara caught up to her, Morinth threw them at her to cover her own escape.
- Mega Man Zero: Two major instances in the series have Zero remorselessly kill brainwashed Reploids in order to progress. Justified Trope, due to the Reploids being part of Neo Arcadia's Forces, and already enemies of his and the Resistance's, to begin with.
- Megaman Zero 2: Elpizo, using the incomplete Dark Elf and the Baby Elves, resurrects and brainwashes the Mutos Reploids that Zero had killed earlier in the game to fight for him instead. Zero ends up cutting through all of them, with each of them regaining their original personality before exploding and dying.
- Megaman Zero 3: Dr. Weil upgrades and modifies the Eight Gentle Judges into becoming his loyal enforcers, now renamed Weil's Numbers. Zero ends up killing each of them twice without hesitation, due to their loyalty to Weil and attempting to help enact his Evil Plan.
- Prey (2017): This is the most reliable solution against the mind-controlled minions of a Telepath Typhon, as the Telepath will force them to perform an Action Bomb attack if the player gets too close. That said, the base game encourages the player to knock them out instead, as survivors count towards 100% Completion. The Mooncrash DLC is a little more permissive, as the mind control victims there, unlike the base game, don't even have names to indicate their importance to the plot.
- In StarCraft I, after Zeratul's attempt to rescue the brainwashed Raszagal from Kerrigan fails, and his forces are defeated, he strikes the Matriarch down, allowing her to Die As Herself.
- Star Trek: Resurgence: As bioforming effectively overrides the individual with a Tkon, killing them is the only real option left for the crew of the Resolute if they are to have any chance.
- Played with in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: While the game ultimately reveals that they are, in fact, clones, the corrupted Justice League are portrayed as having been brainwashed by Braniac to aid in his conflict of Metropolis with ARGUS and the Suicide Squad combating them by killing them. Additionally, early in the game, the Squad witness some of the few survivors of Metropolis transformed into Braniac's Mooks the hordes of enemies that the squad mows down throughout the game are brainwashed survivors, if not of the conquest of Metropolis, then of Braniac's past conquests.
Web Original
- Critical Role:
- In the final arc of Critical Role: Campaign Two, according to Travis Willingham, there was a text thread among the Mighty Nein players discussing how to take out Caleb and Beau if the Eyes of Nine managed to fully brainwash them. Thankfully, they never had to enact the plan.
- Zig-Zagged in Critical Role: Campaign Three where all of the members of Bells Hells except Orym have some sort of Superpowered Evil Side that threatens to overtake them completely, leading to some lack of trust among them. Defied in Episode 31, when Ashton and Orym ask the party to commit to being each other's checks and balances should they start to go astray. However, Orym had previously threatened Dorian when he starts to show signs of getting corrupted by the Circlet of Barbed Vision during Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited and later reveals he had privately worked out ways to "neutralize" all of Bells Hells should they turn, implying this trope.
- In the Skibidi Toilet Series, the alliance encounters human survivors who were driven mad by the Skibidi Toilets' song. They try to free them, but Mission Control determines that "their brains are rotten" and orders them burned alive.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Alien Force: For the two-part Season 2 finale "War of the Worlds", Ben recruits Darkstar for the fight against the Highbreed even though he's a villain himself because they could really use all the help they can get. Darkstar has the power to drain the life force from others and uses it against the DNAliens. When Ben realizes Darkstar is going to kill them, he stops him, telling him the DNAliens are all innocent people who were forcibly turned into the Highbreed's servants. Darkstar disapproves of this course of action, but does stop.
- In Castlevania (2017), Isaac's journey in Season 3 leads him to encounter the retired witch Miranda in an abandoned village. When asked why she's alone, she informs him that a nameless magician took her entire community as magical slaves and is working them to death building a new city dedicated to his glory, and Miranda wants the man dead but lacks the power to follow through. Instead, she asks Isaac to carry out her revenge. Because there is no way to reverse the mind control effect, and because Isaac is a Forgemaster who can build his own army up through human sacrifice, Isaac agrees. In the ensuing battle, all the villagers die, either converted into night creatures or by the magician's death.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): In "Metalhead", the Show Within a Show Space Heroes depicts one of the crew, Dr. Mindstrong, being taken over by an alien lifeform. Captain Ryan immediately decides that they need to kill Dr. Mindstrong.
